


Your Touch is Always Golden (Red, White, Black)

by nightrose



Category: Supernatural
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-02-09
Updated: 2010-02-09
Packaged: 2017-10-21 14:50:22
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,553
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/226403
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nightrose/pseuds/nightrose
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dean comes back from hell. He has changed, but so has everything he’s known.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Your Touch is Always Golden (Red, White, Black)

**Title:** Your Touch is Always Golden (Red, White, Black)  
 **Author:** nightrose_spn  
 **Pairings:** Sam/Dean  
 **Rating:** NC-17  
 **Word Count:** 2500  
 **Summary:** Dean comes back from hell. He has changed, but so has everything he’s known.  
 **Notes/Warnings:** Warnings for explicit sex, language, demon blood drinking and memories of violence. For tangodoodles’ help_haiti donation, thank you so much!

Dean comes back different. He comes back twitchy and traumatized and, most of all, paranoid. He distrusts everything. He sees shadows behind every corner. He sees black and yellow in every pair of eyes. He sees fire and brimstone in every flickering T.V. set. He’s the opposite of what he was before.  
At first, he feels terribly guilty for it. Hell didn’t turn him stupid and he notices the desolation in Sammy’s eyes every time he flinches back from a simple, brotherly touch. It tears him apart, but there’s nothing he can do about it.  
He develops these little neuroses. He eats at the same time every day, goes to bed as soon as he can, wakes up early and walks around, no matter how sketchy the town they’re in. He can’t be touched, whether it’s sexual or as sweet as a kiss goodnight or the accidental brush of fingers when Sam’s passing him a mug of coffee in the morning. It makes his heart rush and his whole body tense—and not in a good way.  
He can hear his own screams echoing in his ears sometimes.  
Dean comes back broken, and it’s not until months later that he realizes his fear isn’t paranoia after all.  
He goes for his walk in the slow, quiet drizzle. It’s Wednesday and they’re in a truck stop town maybe fifty miles outside Albuquerque. He gets wolf-whistled at by a pot-bellied man whose eyes rove over his body like he’s a double bacon cheeseburger. That doesn’t bother him. He knows he can take any passerby in a fight, and besides middle-aged creepers are one of those constants of life—inconvenient, irritating, but comfortingly _always there_  
Hair wet, but somewhat reassured by the pounding constancy of the raindrops, he reenters the motel room, expecting to find his lazy pain-in-the-ass brother still fast asleep.  
He isn’t. He so isn’t.  
Sam is moving, the muscles of his back rippling in fascinating slow waves as he fucks furiously, desperately, into the body beneath him. The girl, a tiny brunette, is grinning maniacally.  
Her eyes are black and her left wrist is pouring red blood onto the white sheets.  
Dean convulses with a strange combination of lust and horror. And then Sam latches onto her wrist, suckles at it, kisses the wound open-mouthed.  
“Sammy,” he whispers, and runs. He heads out the front door as fast as his legs will carry him, until his lungs are burning and his eyes are stinging (he will not cry, he will not cry) and he can’t see where he’s going, and he can’t think, and he can’t envision Sam’s gorgeous body moving above the demon.  
Except that he can. Except that it’s all red and black and white in his mind, besides the perfect gold of Sam’s skin, so beautiful, so beautiful.  
He misses it.  
He remembers the days he woke up in those arms, so strong and yet so gentle, holding him close. He remembers his brother’s voice breaking on the words, ‘I love you. I’ll save you. I promise I’ll save you.’ He remembers almost believing it. He remembers the way Sammy used to look at him, with his eyes so full of adoration that he could hardly bear it.  
He never meant to fall in love. Not with Sam, who already had too much of his heart. He never meant to be broken down into pieces, to come back unable to express that love.  
This is not who he is. He’s a rough-and-tumble man who drinks black coffee and straight whiskey and loves guns and his classic car. Eternal love, rainbows and butterflies and all that bullshit—that’s all Sam’s jurisdiction.  
Commitment. He’d told Sam, when they’d first started this, that he would do his best, that he’d try to stay monogamous but he wasn’t sure he was capable of it. Sam had promised he didn’t expect it, but Dean had never wavered.  
They had the opposite conversation when Dean returned from Hell. Sex was a thing of the past when they couldn’t even hold hands without Dean flinching. Sam had sworn that what they had went way beyond that. Hell, Dean can hear the exact words in his head. “I’m not going to abandon you because you’re not putting out, Dean. You went to Hell for me, for fuck’s sake.”  
He’d been offended. Almost angry. And Dean had believed the righteous indignation in those familiar, honest eyes.  
God. Oh, God.  
He’s not sure what’s worse—the fact that Sam’s gone against everything they’ve ever stood for, that he’s let that demon corrupt him, or the simple, everyday betrayal, that Sam cheated on him.  
God.  
He doesn’t want to think about it. He doesn’t want it to be real.  
And then.  
“Dean! Wait!”  
Sammy. He’d know him anywhere. Every time the demons mocked him in Hell with parodies of his beloved, he only had to close his eyes and know that it wasn’t Sam’s voice, it wasn’t Sam.  
Now it is. It hurts so much more than forty years on meathooks, because fire and brimstone is no comparison to this.  
He’s not good enough.  
Dean came back broken, and now he’s not enough. He remembers sheltering Sammy, keeping him safe whether as a precious child or, later as his lover. He remembers wringing pleasure from Sam’s flawless body with his gentle, careful hands. He remembers stitching up wounds and letting Sammy cry into his shoulder.  
Sam strides over to him, and Dean dimly realizes that the ground he’s crouched on is a filthy, mud-streaked roadway shoulder. His jeans are soaked with rain and dirt, blood from where he fell too roughly to his knees. He can’t bring himself to speak.  
“Shh,” Sam says. He is unbearably tender. “C’mere.” He drops to one knee beside his brother and picks him up like an infant, curled in his arms.  
Dean is too weak to resist it. He struggles a little, but Sam ignores him. He wants to hate him for it, but he’s not capable of any feeling for Sam that isn’t this great, aching, heart-breaking love.  
“I’ll get you back. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”  
Sam carries him back to the motel, and Dean is distantly surprised at just how far he managed to run in his blind panic. The rain makes the streets blend together into one big whirl of gray, the white sky and black trees blending, blending.  
Everything goes red around the edges and he drops off into a surprisingly deep sleep.  
When he wakes up, he’s clean, showered, dried, and changed into blessedly modest pajamas (as opposed to his pre-hell nighttime uniform of nudity). He’s tucked in under the crisp sheets, the blanket right up against his chin like he’s a small child. His whole body feels very heavy and very far away.  
Sam is kneeling at his side.  
He’s beautiful, even with the desolation clearly visible in his eyes. “Dean,” he whispers. “Are you feeling all right?”  
“You fucking bastard.” He means it, but there’s no heat behind the words because he’s so tired, so very tired of it all.  
He wishes he were back in Hell. Everything was so simple then. Pain and hate and fear, all being done to you. None of it your fault, your failure. But he can’t say that to Sam. Could never hurt Sam like that.  
Take care of Sammy. Always. No matter what.  
“I’m sorry, Dean.” Sam’s breath catches in a sound suspiciously like a sob. “God, I’m… I’m so sorry.”  
“How long?”  
“What?”  
“How long was I gone before you started fucking her?”  
Sam closes his eyes and says, “Two months. I’d tried everything. Everything. And then Ruby—“  
And of course it’s her.  
“She showed up. Promised me that if I… if I…” His voice is trembling. “She said that if I…”  
Dean wants to hear him say it. Wants him to admit what he’s done. But he can’t do much more than stare at his brother, waiting.  
“She told me if I drank her blood, my powers would get stronger. I can exorcise demons with my mind, Dean. She said if I did it enough, I could get into Hell. I could save you. And… and once you were back…” Tears are dripping out of his eyes, but Dean is remorseless with his silence. For once, he can’t offer comfort. “I couldn’t stop. I tried, I swear I tried, but…”  
“And the sex?” He sounds old and tired to his own ears.  
“That was all me. All me being a fucked-up, lonely bastard who doesn’t deserve you. It… it distracted me. From what I was doing. Drinking her… her…” He stutters to a stop, then, “Dean?”  
“Yeah?”  
“Would it mean anything if I said I was sorry?”  
Dean doesn’t know how to answer that. Sam has apologized a million times before. It’s not meaningless, but he’s not ready to forgive Sam. Not yet.  
“Is there food?” he says instead, and Sam’s face brightens at the prospect of making himself useful.  
“Yeah! I’ll go grab it. It’s in the kitchen.”  
Dean suffers the indignity of having his burger and fries all but fed to him with reasonably good grace. It’s the hopefulness in Sam’s eyes that really kills him when he has to say, “I don’t know if I can be around you right now, Sammy. I’m…”  
“Don’t,” Sam whispers. He moves closer for a single moment, as if to kiss him goodbye, then jerks away. “I’ll… I’ll come see you in a few days?”  
Now he sounds like he’s waiting for rejection. Like Dean could ever live without him. “Yeah.”  
He walks away, bag on his shoulder.  
Dean pretends he doesn’t know that Sam has checked into the room right next door. The sound of Sammy’s pretentious music playing over the fuzzy radio lets him go to sleep, and if he’s very, very quiet he can hear his brother breathing.  
It’s eight days before Sam knocks on his door. The passage of time is slow and steady. Dean eats three times a day, mechanical and with no pleasure. He sleeps for eight hours, lulled by the noises from the next room. The air feels heavy around him, making it hard to walk, hard to breathe.  
He’s never seen anything more horrifying than the haggard look on Sam’s face, the terror in his eyes.  
“Dean, please,” he whispers, and Dean opens his arms, lets his brother collapse into him. “Please.” He’s sobbing, his whole body trembling like it did when he was a baby. “Please. I’m trying. I’m trying, but I don’t know if I can do it without you. Please.” Dean rocks him back and forth, whispering inaudible comfort.  
“What do you need, Sammy?” he finally asks.  
“Help me.” The sadness in his eyes is unspeakable. “I’ll get better, I’ll do it, please, I’ll never speak to her again, but I need your help. I… it’s been… I can’t… I need the blood, Dean. I want it so much. And I won’t do it, I won’t, but I… I need your help. Please.”  
There’s only one possible answer. “Of course, baby boy. Of course.” He cuts off Sam’s thanks, carefully helping Sam sit on the bed. “It’ll be okay,” he says, and his voice sounds so far away. “It’ll be okay.”  
They establish a bit of a truce. Dean lets Sam dry his tears when he wakes up screaming from nightmares of hell. Sam lets Dean promise everything is all right when he shakes with lust for the taste of blood.  
It’s their compromise, and it works. It has to. They have no other choice. They can’t exactly live without each other, can they?  
So they make it happen. They make it work.  
Until Ruby knocks on the door.  
Dean is quietly sitting on the bed, flicking through a porno magazine and wishing that it stirred something in him, when he hears her sweet, high voice and Sam’s, rougher and lower.  
“Come on, Sam. Your brother’s safe, sure. But Lucifer is rising. You know that?”  
“Yes.”  
“You know you can stop him?”  
“I’m not sure about that.”  
“Sammy…”  
Dean stiffens. No one else is allowed to call his brother that.  
“Hey. Only Dean gets to call me that,” Sam protests.  
That’s his boy.  
“Really-“  
“No. No, Ruby. I can’t, and I won’t.”  
“Sam-“  
“Go away.”  
Dean is cheering inwardly, so relieved he barely knows what to do besides be grateful to his brother for choosing this— choosing him. Him over the addiction, him over the blood and the darkness.  
“Go away, Ruby.” Then he sounds so tired, so weary. The door opens. Dean is so tempted to fake sleep, but he doesn’t. Sam deserves more than that. Sam deserves—  
Dean springs to his feet and meets his brother with a warm, passionate kiss.  
“Thank you,” he gasps, when the kiss ends. “Thank you for this. For-“  
Sam hushes him, presses another, chaste kiss to Dean’s lips, and says, “I love you.”  
“Take me to bed,” Dean whispers.  
“What?”  
“I want to feel you. Something real-“  
“You sure? You don’t have to—“  
Dean smiles. “Don’t make me beg, Sammy.”  
“Of course not.” He presses Dean close to him again, rubs his back, and says, “But stop me if it’s not working for you, all right? Don’t you dare just lie there and take it because you think you owe it to me.”  
Dean manages a mute nod, and then, finally, finally, a real smile bursts across Sam’s smile, the kind of innocent happiness he hasn’t seen from his brother in so very long.  
Then it’s all warm, careful touches, Sam lifting him and laying him back against the white sheets, his red-bitten lips pressing the gentlest of kisses to every inch of skin as his clothes are peeled away. Sam removes every shirt and jacket, all those layers of armor Dean wraps himself in. For once, he doesn’t want to hide, to shy away. He revels in Sam’s touch, trembling as his brother kisses him, touches him, breathes life back into him.  
“Love you, so much, so much…”  
Sam’s oaths turn into moans as Dean’s hand slicks him with the lube. They exchange more kisses, and that grounds Dean as his brother preps him carefully.  
“Tell me if I hurt you. It’s this body’s first time,” Sam says.  
“I will.”  
Dean feels so stripped bare, so naked and vulnerable, but… it’s safe. Sammy won’t hurt him. Sammy only wants to love him, to heal him, to be with him.  
“I love you,” he whimpers as Sam enters him in one gentle, careful thrust. It’s so unbelievably tender that it brings tears to his eyes.  
Sam kisses them away, one by one. With nothing more than slow pistons of his hips and his stomach rubbing against Dean’s cock, Dean has his first orgasm since he went to Hell, gasping Sam’s name as the world explodes in a bright burst of black and white.  



End file.
